CUTTACK: The Orissa High Court has quashed criminal proceedings against four teachers and staff members of a Champua-based school accused of abetting the suicide of a 16-year-old Class X student, ruling that routine disciplinary action cannot be treated as criminal abetment without evidence of deliberate instigation or intent.
Justice RK Pattanaik held that reprimanding students for consuming an intoxicating substance did not, by itself, establish that the school staff had provoked the teenager to take his life. The court set aside the order of cognisance passed by the Sub-divisional Judicial Magistrate (SDJM), Champua, on September 24, 2025.
“A simple act of reprimand of a student by a teacher, who is under moral obligation to maintain discipline would not amount to instigation or intentionally aiding to the commission of a suicide,” Justice Pattanaik observed.
The case arose from the death of the student on July 12, 2025, after he allegedly jumped from the fourth floor of the hostel at Kerala English
Medium School at Champua in Keonjhar district. His father alleged that the boy had been physically assaulted and tortured by school staff a day before his death. Police initially registered a murder case but subsequently filed a charge sheet alleging abetment of suicide and common intention under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
The four accused challenged the cognisance order, arguing that the investigation had not produced sufficient evidence to establish their criminal involvement.
Examining the charge sheet and other materials, the court noted that some hostel inmates had consumed Dendrite, an intoxicant, following which the petitioners reprimanded them and warned that their guardians would be informed. Some students were also made to spend the night on the hostel verandah as punishment. The deceased was among those warned.
Justice Pattanaik said there was no allegation of sustained harassment against the petitioners and no evidence of any positive or indirect act of instigation. “The legal threshold for abetment of suicide requires proof of active instigation, provocation or intentional aid,” the Judge said, adding that the requisite criminal intent could not be inferred merely from an unfortunate outcome following routine school discipline.
The delay of about one-and-a-half hours in informing the student’s father was not conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, as the staff might
have been occupied with efforts to save the boy’s life, Justice Pattanaik also ruled, indicting the magistrate for accepting the charge sheet without adequately applying judicial mind.
